A policeman's story: Out of tragedy comes best of humanity

U.S. Army veteran and retired 30-year Clifton, N.J., police officer Bill Cooke thought he had seen every way a person could die.

Andrew Scott

U.S. Army veteran and retired 30-year Clifton, N.J., police officer Bill Cooke thought he had seen every way a person could die.

But nothing could prepare Cooke for the sight of a burnt human torso on the hood of a pickup truck, which was beside a landing wheel and two bloody, empty seats from a passenger airplane, all covered in ash and surrounded by debris.

Or the sight of what Cooke at first mistook for a dead squirrel buried in rubble. It turned out to be someone's ponytail.

"We didn't find bodies," said the former police tactical response team member and hostage rescue/street survival instructor, now 64 and living in Delaware Township. "We found pieces of bodies."

Cooke, who retired in 1998, was part of a contingent of active and retired Clifton, N.J., police officers who had volunteered to help guard City Hall in the wake of that morning's attacks.

"But, instead of helping guard rescuers, we were told to grab picks and buckets and get in line," Cooke said. "We became part of the recovery effort."

Cooke and other Clifton officers spent two days at ground zero. They would spend two days there, get another batch of fresh volunteers from Clifton and then return.

"I was in both groups," he said. "It was a total of more than 20 of us. We worked 12-hour shifts and slept for six hours on cardboards on the sidewalk by (City University of New York). One of us stood guard while the rest slept."

Wearing helmets bearing their names and blood types, the Clifton police joined crews from other agencies in digging through the mound of debris that used to be the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, handing buckets of rubble down for other workers to sift through.

"There were these little caves in the mound that we yelled down into to see if anyone was still alive and trapped in there," Cooke said. "We got no response."

"The mound was unstable and could shift at any time and suck us in," Cooke said. "If the air horn blew, that was the signal for everybody to get off the mound and get a safe distance away."

"One thing that got me was how much dust and ash and papers there were everywhere, spread out for blocks in all directions," Cooke said. "The ash was a foot deep and got deeper the closer you got to the center of the destruction. We had to tape the tops of our boots to our pants to keep ash from getting in."

Another unforgettable sight was that of grown men, exhausted police officers and firefighters "bawling their eyes out" for their fallen brothers buried alongside civilians in the rubble.

Cooke shed his share of tears, even more when learning later that one of the victims was a Port Authority police officer who had been a friend of his.

"We were witnesses to horror, but also to the kindness and caring people show for each other in a situation like that," he said.

With the National Guard setting up a perimeter around the eight city blocks that was ground zero, the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other agencies worked to provide care, food and water to first responders, recovery crews and wounded civilians.

"Don't believe the stereotype about New Yorkers being cold, mean, uncaring people," Cooke said. "People there on that day put the needs of others ahead of their own. It didn't matter what race or religion you are. Everybody came together to help each other.

"There were restaurants donating food and people bringing food and drink to first responders and recovery crews," he said. "People were hugging and kissing us and crying. It was really emotional."

A few months after the attacks, Cooke was invited to speak to Clifton High School students about his experiences at ground zero.

"An Islamic student asked me if I thought there would be any massive, organized retaliation against the Islamic community, like there was against Japanese-Americans put in detention camps during World War II," he said. "I told her what I believed at the time, that nothing shameful like that would ever happen again. Because Muslims had been killed along with Christians and Jews that day and many Muslims have condemned the attacks."

A church in Clifton wanted to honor Cooke and the others who had gone to help at ground zero.

"I told the pastor that none of us wanted to be honored because none of us felt like heroes," he said.

Instead, the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Clifton, of which Cooke is a member, raised and donated money to the Salvation Army while the city of Clifton erected a memorial for nine of its residents who had been killed.

The memorial includes a statue, offered by Cooke to the city, of two silhouetted human figures holding up the New York City skyline above their heads. At the base of the statue is a plaque remembering the horrific event.

The skyline was carved from an I-beam that Port Authority Police Lt. Mike Carnevale, another friend of Cooke's, retrieved at a scrap yard housing Twin Towers debris. The skyline was then sandblasted by Cooke's friend, Alan Tuske, and painted with a sealant.

This inspired Cooke to have Carnevale make more steel from the World Trade Center debris available, which Cooke then had the Affanito Machine Co. in Rutherford, N.J., cut into crosses and Stars of David. Since then, Cooke has given these crosses and Stars of David to 9/11 victims' families and U.S. military personnel.